State Senate candidate and Wichita City Council member Michael O’Donnell may blame his church’s new liability for back taxes on “a political agenda from the Wisconsin atheists,” as he put it. But the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s challenge to the tax-exempt status of O’Donnell’s home has been justified by the Sedgwick County Appraiser’s Office, which ruled last week that the former Grace Baptist Church parsonage is subject to property taxes from 2010 onward. As a foundation attorney said, “Sedgwick County taxpayers should not have to pay more taxes because a church and its leaders have falsely claimed an exemption.” And given that O’Donnell wants to be a state lawmaker, he should be more respectful of what the law says. He showed a similar disdain early this year, when he dismissed an ethics complaint against him as “a political hit job” – though the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission later fined him $500.
With a little more than a month to go until Wichitans decide whether to fluoridate the water system, the opponents appear to be gaining on proponents. In August, 62 percent of Wichitans polled by SurveyUSA said they would vote for adding fluoride, with 31 percent against and 7 percent undecided. In last week’s follow-up SurveyUSA poll, also sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, only 46 percent said they were sure to vote “yes,” with 40 percent planning to vote “no” and 14 percent undecided. Support is strongest among self-described liberals (61 percent) and those who’ve spent at least four years in college (60 percent) and earn more than $80,000 a year (57 percent); opposition is strongest among self-described conservatives (51 percent) and those whose education ended with high school (53 percent).
Communities across the state are still reeling from the abrupt decision by the Brownback administration to end the successful Main Street program. Since 1985, the program has provided training, consultation and financial support to help smaller towns revitalize their downtowns. Areas communities involved in the program include Augusta, El Dorado, Peabody and Winfield. Marci Penner, director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, said Main Street was “one of the most effective state programs there was.” The decision to cancel the program, which Kansas Department of Commerce Secretary Pat George blamed on “smaller state and federal budgets moving forward,” means that Kansas will be one of only about a dozen states without a state-level Main Street program, the Hutchinson News reported. The move also seems counter to Brownback’s goal of revitalizing rural communities.
“Obesity is 10, 15, 20 percent of the kids, depending where we’re at – but we’re going to put 100 percent of the kids on a diet. But not the kids of Mr. and Mrs. Obama.” – Rep. Tim Huelskamp (in photo), R-Fowler, referring to the school-lunch calorie limits and the fact that the Obamas’ daughters attend private school
“Refrain from using her official title at the event and in related press reports, and note that we will not be taking questions concerning her official responsibilities.” – President Obama’s campaign, prepping New Hampshire media for former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ first political appearances since she was cited for violating the law by campaigning while acting in her official capacity as health and human services secretary
Rather than continuing to play small ball with President Obama, which isn’t working, Mitt Romney needs to “engage on the big stuff,” columnist Charles Krauthammer advised. “Go large. About a foreign policy in ruins. About an archaic, 20th-century welfare state model that guarantees 21st-century insolvency. And about an alternate vision of an unapologetically assertive America abroad unafraid of fundamental structural change at home.”
Just as some Republicans were starting to rally back around Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., he made another Neanderthal move. Akin commented this week that Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., didn’t act very “ladylike” during their most recent debate, which he said shows that she “feels threatened” by his candidacy. Akin not only will likely lose his race, but he also likely will cost the GOP any hope of regaining the Senate.
A key question that moderator Jim Lehrer needs to ask at next week’s presidential debate is whether the candidates favor restoring majority rule, columnist Matt Miller argued. “In other words,” he wrote, “ask them if they would urge the Senate to scrap the filibuster – and if not, how do they expect to get anything done?” The 60-vote requirement to end debate in the Senate has been so abused by both parties that it is incredibly difficult for Congress to get anything done, regardless of who is president.
The question of whether Sedgwick County should spend $10,000 on a hospitality tent for the Wings Over McConnell air show this weekend got a lot of attention, with commissioners having a worthwhile debate about such taxpayer-funded perks before voting 3-2 Wednesday to contribute $10,000 to the event but not use a tent. The dollars involved are minuscule in the context of the county’s $408 million annual budget and McConnell Air Force Base’s $500 million annual economic impact on the community. Plus, the city of Wichita contributed $15,000 to the show. But at least the controversy brought attention to McConnell and its value to Wichita and Sedgwick County, and reminded the public to get out this weekend to enjoy the air show (10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday) and support the base. Bigger issues about McConnell loom, as the Kansas congressional delegation advocates for basing the new KC-46A tanker fleet there amid talk of deep defense spending cuts and, eventually, more base closings.
With the Kansas Chamber of Commerce having pursued a more political agenda in recent years, the job as its president and CEO should be a good fit for longtime Rep. Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, who is retiring after four years as House speaker. It also makes sense as a “thank you” to O’Neal, given how aggressively the chamber helped Gov. Sam Brownback push for the Legislature to slash income taxes. In fact, the cuts only became law this year because of O’Neal’s gambit to ram through a deeply flawed bill and pre-empt a Senate attempt to kill any chance of tax cuts. After that showdown, the governor’s budget director was heard telling O’Neal, “We really appreciate that. We’ll always remember it.”
The always sharp-tongued Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, recently made national news with comments at the 2012 Values Voter Summit equating abortion and slavery, and claiming that Planned Parenthood “was created for the sole purpose of killing children that look like mine – a racist organization, and it continues specifically to target minorities for abortion destruction.” That prompted the Louisville Courier-Journal to call out Huelskamp (who has adopted four children of different ethnicities) in an editorial criticizing political language that strains “good taste as well as meaning.” The editorial argued: “Surely, Rep. Huelskamp, there are better ways of making an anti-abortion argument than calling millions of people racist baby killers.”
Kansas State University president Kirk Schulz tried to clarify Wednesday that his move to end the use of “K-State” was aimed at communications with national audiences, not local ones. “The nickname ‘K-State’ has become common to those of us in the state and region, and we recognize the strength of being known to certain audiences as K-State,” he said in a statement. That’s wise. As another Kansas Board of Regents institution learned a few years back with its goofy nine-year bid to be called “The Wichita State University,” school and community traditions have deep roots unlikely to be disturbed by marketing decisions.
Kansas native Sheila Bair stood out during her five-year term as chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for her early warnings about high-risk lending and her willingness to take on the big banks. She is still speaking out in her new book, “Bull by the Horns,” which was released Tuesday. Bair, who grew up in Independence and graduated from the University of Kansas, blasts bankers she blames for the crisis and criticizes Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for being an apologist for Wall Street and opposing financial reforms, the New York Times reported.
Gov. Sam Brownback asked lobbyists to contribute to a fundraiser Monday for 14 Republican state Senate candidates, prompting Democratic officials to complain about a pay-to-play system of government. Many of the candidates – including Rep. Dan Kerschen, R-Garden Plain, and Wichita City Council member Michael O’Donnell – defeated GOP incumbents in the August primary. Sponsors of the event, which was held at a Topeka law firm, contributed $1,000 to each candidate, and donors had to contribute $500 to each candidate. The list of sponsors was “a Who’s Who of lobbyists who represent interests in the Statehouse, and people and organizations tied to Brownback,” the Lawrence Journal-World reported.
A Chicago official and a gay-rights organization announced last week that Chick-fil-A executives had pledged to stop giving money to anti-gay groups. The company said in a letter that its nonprofit arm, the WinShape Foundation, would not support “organizations with political agendas,” and it affirmed in a statement that it would protect its employees against discrimination. But after a backlash from conservative Christians who had rallied to support the company, Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy denied the company has agreed to cease making donations to groups that oppose gay marriage.
With only six weeks left before the November elections, there is still confusion about what voter IDs are acceptable in Kansas. Brad Bryant, deputy assistant secretary of state, said he thinks that high school IDs would be allowable, but election officials in several counties don’t think they are, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. There is also uncertainty about whether only public school IDs would be acceptable, or whether a private school ID would count, too. Meanwhile, the civil rights group Advancement Project issued a report Monday estimating that as many as 10 million Hispanic U.S. citizens may be deterred from registering and voting because of new voting laws. Mission accomplished?
Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts were supposed to spur enough economic growth that significant budget cuts wouldn’t be necessary. But his administration now seems to be fashioning a new narrative as it moves toward cutting state spending next year, Associated Press reported. “There are forces beyond the state’s control,” spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said. “There’s still a great deal of uncertainty with the economy.” That’s true, but that was the case when Brownback signed the tax cuts into law, despite warnings from state budget analysts that the cuts could result in significant budget shortfalls. “Sherriene can spin it as forces beyond their control,” Kansas Democratic Party chairwoman Joan Wagnon said, “but the truth is this is what they created.”
Secretary of State Kris Kobach isn’t the only well-known Kansas name on the GOP front lines in a fight against the so-called epidemic of voter fraud. A New York Times article noted that former U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun (in photo), who represented the 2nd Congressional District from 1996 to 2007, now chairs the Madison Project, a political action committee financing a plan called Code Red USA to blanket polling places in swing states with conservative election observers watching for Democrats bent on voter fraud. “Our mission is to organize, equip, train and mobilize grassroots conservatives to take back America,” says a Code Red USA video, which describes the “Obama political machine” as “absolutely determined to do anything to stay in power.”
Good for the entire Kansas delegation in the U.S. House for voting Wednesday to stop using tax dollars to subsidize political party conventions. Now a final measure will be negotiated with the Senate, which has passed its own version. The $35 million in public support for the recent conventions represented only 20 percent of their total costs, and eliminating the subsidy won’t help the nation’s deficit. But the political parties can and should pay for their own parties.
Our state’s turn in the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog series on state politics came Wednesday under the headline, “The End of a Kansas Tradition: Moderation.” It put the “near-fatal wound” that centrist Republicans were dealt in last month’s GOP primary in the context of a “two-decade drift to the political right” in the state, highlighting how once-Democratic Sedgwick County “has transformed into a good political bellwether, coming within 1 percentage point of the statewide vote in the last three elections.” The blog gave Mitt Romney a “100 percent chance of carrying the state” while noting a “a moderate Republican or Democratic comeback on the state level is possible” should the controlling conservatives overreach. It closed with a prediction from David Kensinger, formerly Gov. Sam Brownback’s chief of staff: “You’re going to see durable conservative majority governing Kansas for the foreseeable future.”
The Kansas Department of Revenue projected that Kansas would have added about 150,000 new jobs between now and 2020 without any state tax cuts. The expected impact of the state tax cuts passed during the recent legislative session is an additional 20,000 jobs. Similarly, the department estimated that Kansas could have expected 200,000 new residents without the tax cuts, and it expects that to increase by about 40,000 as a result of the tax cuts. “Despite the administration’s claims that tax reform will light a fire under the economy, the Department of Revenue’s own projections show less than amazing results,” a Hutchinson News editorial noted. And those tax cuts are projected to result in large budget shortfalls.
Many state insurance commissioners find themselves between a rock and a hard place: The federal government requires them to show progress by Nov. 16 toward setting up health insurance exchanges, but state-level conservatives insist they do nothing in the hope that the GOP will retake the White House and U.S. Senate on Nov. 6 and repeal “Obamacare” next year. According to Reuters, only 13 mostly Democratic states have made the commitment to establish their own insurance exchanges; under the law, those that don’t will see the federal government step in to do the job. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger is among the insurance commissioners in this delicate position. “Even the conservatives, given the option from having some control to no control, they’d prefer to have some control,” she told Reuters. “But until this election is behind us, they’re not willing to do anything that would show they’re supporting Obamacare. And that’s the same situation a lot of states are in.”
Americans are evenly divided on whether they want President Obama or Mitt Romney to win in the November election. But they aren’t divided when asked which candidate they think will win. Nearly 6 in 10 registered voters think Obama will win, while only 34 percent Romney think will win, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll.
The absence of gunfire in Old Town has been a welcome change after four straight weekends of reports of shots fired. Police are treating the trouble with the seriousness it deserves and stepping up their presence in the nightlife district. Their attention is especially focused on the key hours of 12:30 to 2:30 a.m. on weekends, around the time the bars close, and in one block of North Mosley. Police, city officials and business owners will hold another meeting Friday to work toward a long-term plan for Old Town security. Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz told The Eagle editorial board Thursday that changes in how police enforce the curfew, address loitering and handle traffic may be part of the strategy, along with some “tweaking” of ordinances. But he also stressed that “statistically, nothing has changed over the last two or three years in Old Town – it’s a safe area” – but that “we have some very specific times and geography to talk about.” A poll by SurveyUSA, sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, showed why it’s important to be aggressive about the issue: 82 percent of those polled Tuesday said they’d heard of the string of shootings, and 62 percent said they’d be less likely to visit Old Town because of them. According to KAKE, Channel 10, the shootings also have inspired a tasteless T-shirt.
The Romney campaign seized this week on a 14-year-old tape of Barack Obama, then a state senator, saying that he believes “in redistribution.” But it turns out the full tape shows that the comment is not what Romney’s campaign claimed. “Obama is not talking about redistributing wealth at all – instead, he speaks about competition, the marketplace and innovation in an effort to improve government services in Chicago,” according to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column, which gave the claim “four Pinocchios,” its highest rating for “whoppers.”
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., praised an inspector general’s report on the botched Fast and Furious gun-trafficking operation, saying during a House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday that it would help restore public faith in the U.S. Justice Department. The report blasts Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officials for “a series of misguided strategies, tactics, errors in judgment and management failures.” The report vindicates Republican criticisms of the operation, though it also rebuts GOP claims that Attorney General Eric Holder (in photo) knew about Fast and Furious before it was suspended. The report also notes how the first operation began during the Bush administration.
